Propaganda Design

What started as a student body election turned into a revelation into my future.

In May of 2015, I saw my semester and a half of student body experience as “strong” enough to run for the Junior Senator position. After all, thirty weeks of Associated Student Body was enough to represent 1,000 people, right?

Wrong.

I lost by a landslide. The prior Freshman and Sophomore Senator secured her third term in office. Looking back at it, I was foolish to have been demotivated by this loss.

It actually motivated me to work harder. As a Junior Delegate in ASB, I put my best foot forward as the MEND Canned Food Drive and Spirit Week Chairman. Through a week of school spirit and a month of helping the less fortunate locals for the holidays, I developed a reputation as a positive member of my campus. I saw that leadership is not defined by the position itself, but what you do in that position.

Come the end of junior year, I decided to run for the ASB School Treasurer. Why can we afford new Chromebooks for 4600 students, but the band can’t get cleaning supplies for our instruments? Why did [insert team name here]'s budget decrease this year? How can teachers get a six-figure salary, but the school lunches are barely consumable? I sought to answer these puzzling accusations to satisfy my craving for understanding. But I also wanted others to know. A mentality to leadership that I fought to bring forth was transparency: the answers and information I would gain as a leader should be readily accessible to any of the 4600 students I represent that ask.

With a clear goal in mind, I revamped my publicity. Through reading about Hitler’s effective use of bold colors and striking patterns as propaganda. I sought to employ a similar technique. As cynical as it sounds, if millions knew about Hitler during his campaign for Vice Chancellor, I could surely get my name out there for a high school. I worked closely with my summer drawing instructor to get the shadowing of my face just right, the chiseled jaw acting as a symbol of confidence and strength. We finalized JAFREEDOM:

This surge of propaganda sent in ten posters, 900 backpack tags, and 1000 flyers quickly got people talking.

“Is that the Communist running for office?” “Those posters yell ‘Stalin’ in my face. I like it.”

I quickly learned my first facet of politics: [almost] all publicity is good publicity. In a sea of hastily-made, handwritten posters with small-fonted and lengthy slogans, my posters served as a stark contrast. It got people talking. You see, when you have two weeks to convince over two thousand people that they should vote for you, publicity to the masses is the only way to go. This led to some introspective thinking a day after my campaign team was working at full blast: Do I want people to vote for me because of a poster? No. I wanted genuine votes to so that people genuinely believed in my mission for transparency in representation. While spending every day at lunch and nutrition talking to my peers about my campaign yielded some strong supporters, that wasn’t enough. Votes aren’t counted on a spectrum, so the quality of votes would have to be sacrificed for quantity if I wanted to win-- or so I thought.

The answer to a genuine AND winning campaign came in the QR. Behind every flyer and backpack tag came a giant square of bar codes with “SCAN ME WITH SNAPCHAT” in bold on top. I utilized something that most highschoolers have, Snapchat, to allow the thousands that I couldn’t talk to individually to get to know more about my campaign. Taking a picture of that square would take them directly to the Official Jafreedom website. This website created a foundation for people interested in the electoral process to educate themselves about not only what I stand for, but also how to vote in a complex online system. With over 1800 student views, I upheld my standards of a morally sound election.

With the arts of propaganda, the politics of publicity, and the spread of my message through the internet, I was elected as the ASB Treasurer. The days, weeks, and months after would create a devotion to the students-- a devotion that will last far past my two semester term.